Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Hot Cold Plunge

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

Jumping into a cold pool after a long sauna or hot tub can be pretty great. Saunas have proven health benefits like lowering blood pressure; cold plunges are shown to reduce inflammation. Why not combine them? A bunch of safety reasons, bucko, that’s why.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's right. We're talking about a very hot trend. It's been around for a long, long time, depending on where you are in the world. But it's a very hot trend, of course, among probably celebrity types and influencers. We're talking, of course, about cold plunging and specifically the sort of hot, cold thing, either hot tub or sauna. I'm sorry, sauna. Is that just you that says that? No.

We got, when we did our sauna episode, every Finnish person in the world wrote in and said it's pronounced sauna. Wow, great, nicely done. I'm gonna start saying sausage. Sausage, I already say sausage. Yeah, you wanna see how the sausage is made? Are you part finned?

No, no, I wish I was, but I'm not. Okay, so yeah, it does kind of make sense that this would be like big in Finland because the Finns were the ones who were credited with inventing the sauna sauna, which supposedly in finn, sauna means bath, essentially what you would call bath. And before the fins had running hot water that was handy everywhere. They use saunas to basically bathe rather than having to just go out in the snow and bathe. Yeah, I guess like a dry bath, a hot dry bath. Exactly. That you make yourself wet in.

That's right. Exactly. You're, you're, you're lathering up with your own liquids. That sounds really gross. If you go to like the Finnish tourism board website or something, you might see them also say something like this. When you come out of the sauna, jump into a lake or roll in the snow. Because they all sound like Freud, apparently.

They do. If you do roll in the snow, make sure it is fresh and powdery, old icy snow can have an effect on your skin like sandpaper. That, Chuck, one of the, that voice is one of your Halloween episode voices. I recognize it from so many. Yeah, so what they're talking about though is this hot to cold thing, which is leaving a sauna and jumping right into some cold water or in their case, a lot of times snow. Yeah, which is awesome. It can be really great, but just like any trend or thing that everybody's behind, it's worth taking an extra look to see if it may

or may not be actually beneficial could even be harmful. And it turns out there is a lot of evidence on each sauna's and cold therapy, cold plunges, that kind of thing that say, yeah, these actually do have some pretty good beneficial effects, but both of them also pose risks. and there's not a lot of actual research on Combining them which is purposefully shocking your body temperature wise. That's the point of that hot cold thing We're not exactly sure if it's a good thing for you. Yeah, I mean, I think we all know that Like a sauna or something like that getting a good sweat in Can be good for you.

There's a lot of benefits to sweating. You're regulating your body temperature, you're activating your cardiovascular system. It kind of can mimic exercise, even cardiovascular exercise. We also know that it can help detoxify you and we also know that cold stuff has benefits and it's a great anti-inflammatory and athletes have long, you know, sat in like ice baths

and stuff after like the big game or something like that, not specifically the Super Bowl. Any big game? Not capital T, H-E, big game. Sure. But these two things separately, we already know, and it's kind of proven that they both have a lot of great benefits. But there are people that say, well, when you combine them together, you can reap even more benefits. Yeah. And what the benefits arise from ostensibly is called the Hormetic Effect, or Hormetic

Stress, which is technically a good kind of stress. It's the kind of stress you put on your body when you're exercising and in doing so by kind of pushing your body beyond its normal homeostatic status quo, you're actually, you're training it to better respond to stresses that you don't intentionally put on it, like just being stressed in general. And so supposedly, according to this idea, the

Hormetic effect, which seems to be pretty legitimate, by just kind of slowly, little by little stressing your body, you improve your body's stress response, your immune system, that kind of thing. And exercise is one way to do it. But also, exposing it to temperature extremes, like through a sauna or a cold plunge, also produces H effects because they put hormetic stress on your body too. That seems to be the basis behind health benefits from sauna-ing or cold plunging. Yeah and you know people will tell you that it really also can help you mentally. It can like be an invigorating experience and people you know there is a little bit of research that says that people have shown to like improve their mood and stuff like

that. So, you know, there are a lot of people that say a lot of things about all the benefits. What you haven't seen a whole lot of, and I guess we'll discuss this after the break, is like, all right, well then show me the large scale, randomized controlled studies with large data pools of people from all kinds of age groups. I guess not randomized, but just large, you know, a variety of people doing this thing. And then like, then we can actually talk science.

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But then when you start digging a little deeper and you're like, well, let me see if there's any studies about this, it turns out they're trying to do it now and we're only just now, like the research or these articles that I kind of picked from were from just a couple of months ago, like late in 2023, where they're just now starting to say like, hey, we need to get a thousand people, not 20 healthy young men, 20 healthy young finish men who are like, this feels great. And we need to really,

because some of this stuff is plausible, these doctors are saying, but we really need to dig in on it because it also could probably be dangerous. Yeah, because I mean, it seems like what the whole idea is predicated on is that we do have, you know, like substantial research showing that there are health benefits from the sauna, like it lowers blood pressure and improves cardiovascular health, and that there's demonstrable benefits from cold plunges, like it's an anti-inflammatory.

Like you said, it can improve mood. Apparently a technique for breaking a panic attack when you're in the midst of it is to sink your face into a bowl of ice water for about 10 seconds and it produces what's called the diving reflex and releases dopamine and norepinephrine in enough amounts that it can actually derail or Short circuit a panic attack. So there is like actual legitimate benefits to each one. Like you're saying though, it's them combined that the jury is still out on, right? I wonder if Huey Lewis was having a panic attack when he plunged his face in ice water

in the I Want a New Drug video. He wasn't after that, I'll tell you that much. Not to make light of panic attacks, of course. I was just kind of making light of Huey Lewis. Sure. And his news. Well, we had someone write in actually, because we've been flipped with that term.

Uh-huh. That's like, if you've ever suffered a panic attack, you probably wouldn't just say, oh, almost had a panic attack. Sure. This doesn't sound like us. And so there's, you know, say what? This doesn't sound like us.

Oh, it was us. So depending on who you talk to, there are doctors that say this actually can be very dangerous. The National Center for Cold Weather Safety website says, you know, you can, there's something called a cold shock response where you have such a rapid increase in breathing and heart rate and blood pressure that if you're not in great cardiac health, this could possibly kill you. Like you could have a cardiac arrest right there on the spot. Yeah, that's nuts, which makes sense because I mean, it feels like you could like when you jump into a cold plunge, especially if you're already really hot. But supposedly in less than a minute, you could die in water that's 60 degrees Fahrenheit or lower.

And there's other things that can happen too. If you jump all the way in, like a lot of cold plunges don't involve your head, which is way, way worse than just jumping in or harder, I should say, more difficult. But if you do jump in all at once, the shock of the cold could be enough that you involuntarily gasp. And if you're underwater, that's not good for your lungs. Yeah.

And you know, the first time I kind of reconsidered this, because I had done this kind of thing, I've done some, and it wasn't like, oh, let's do a cold plunge. Like literally in high school in the 80s, we would like jump into the icy lake at this Sort of youth group camp. So that wasn't being true It was just the fun thing to do. Gotcha. It's like a polar plunge But I was with my good friend Adam Pranika of the greatest generation over not too long ago and

I Was moving to do this it It was, uh, hey, we're in the hot tub. Let's jump in this cold pool. Yeah. And he said, you better watch out, bro. You better not cry. I had him say, bro. And I went, what do you mean? And he went, well, I'm just getting ready cause you could have a cardiac arrest. And I was like, what? And he went, yeah, it's something that can happen. And all of a sudden I was nervous because you know, I'm not in, you know,

like headed toward the emergency room anytime soon, but I have a cardiac score that gives me a little bit of pause when it comes to thinking about something like this. Sure. So I was like, well, jeez, I'm not in high school anymore. Maybe I should think about this. And I jumped out of the hot tub and I dove into the pool head first.

And it was great, it was awesome, and it was fun, and I didn't have a cardiac arrest. But it did make me think twice, and each time I moved to do this from now on, I will think twice. I have to say I was really surprised by that twist at the end there that you actually went ahead and jumped in, yeah. I was expecting you to be twist at the end there that you actually jumped in. Yeah

I was like, I'm not doing that anymore. No, and you know what what I gathered And of course we need the real research and the real data to know this but from what I gathered from the warnings It was like there's probably a middle ground between like being a healthy 22 year old Finnish person Uh-huh and having like being in really, really poor cardiac health. And I'm somewhere in the middle there. And you should not do it if you're like in really, really bad cardiac health. Not even really, really bad.

If you're being treated for any kind of cardiac condition, you probably shouldn't cold plunge, especially not after a sauna too. At the very least talk to your doctor about it. Don't listen to us. Don't take hard advice, please. But not only is the, whether you have a heart condition or not a differentiator, the water temperature

is a differentiator too. You'll see people who are like, yeah, jump into water that's like 57 degrees Fahrenheit. That is astoundingly cold. That's the water temperature that killed the survivors of the Titanic going down like that's North Sea in February cold water temperature, right? You can get the same effect from much warmer. Yeah water I mean, I'm talking like 70 degrees still sounds warm. That's not warm Especially if you're in like a hot tub first or a sauna first or you've exercised or something like that. It does the trick. It does everything

you need to do without, or I shouldn't say without the chance of killing you, with a much less chance of killing you. Yeah. I mean, I've even seen that you can take a very hot shower and then turn it to cold. Yeah, that's nice too. And that's even enough to sort of give you some benefit. Even worse, Chuck, is not taking the hot shower first. Just getting into a cold shower, immediately turning the water on, it's rough.

But if you can train yourself to do it, it's very rewarding. Yeah, I did that for a summer in Athens when I didn't feel like turning the gas on. Man, and you were like ripped from it, I'll bet. It was more ripped than it was now, and of course it was Athens in the summer, so it was hot, so it wasn't quite as bad as you might imagine. For sure.

So I guess we should probably just wrap up one more time. This can be dangerous. You should probably do a little more research on it, especially if you have a questionable heart, or your heart's questionably healthy. Just use your head. Use your noodle first. Don't just listen to what people on TikTok tell you.

Listen to what people on podcasts tell you. Yeah, and maybe even a pool noodle in case you lose consciousness. Smart. That means short stuff is out. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts to myHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.